사회신뢰와 국가의 부 창출과정 (Social Trust and Accumulation Process of Wealth of Nation)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국소비자학회
· 수록지 정보 : 소비자학연구 / 23권 / 2호 / 45 ~ 58페이지
· 저자명 : 박상준

초록

사회신뢰는 거래비용을 줄이고 집단적 문제를 해결하는데 도움을 줌으로써 협력에 긍정적 영향을 미치고, 궁극적으로는 국가의 경제적 성과를 증대시키는 것으로 알려져 있다. 사회자본의 핵심요소의 하나인 사회신뢰는 사회구성원 간의 상호작용에 있어서 이러한 긍정적 역할로 인하여 다양한 학문분야에서 관심을 받아 왔다. 열심히 일하는것에 대한 사회적 가치인식이 높으면 사회구성원들이 열심히 일하게 되고 이것이 국가의 부를 증대시키게 된다. 그러나 열심히 일하는 것에 대한 긍정적 가치인식이 사회신뢰에 미치는 영향에 대해서는 선행연구에서 관심이 부족했다. 본 연구에서는 열심히 일하는 것에 대한 긍정적 인식이 사회신뢰에 미치는 영향을 미치는지 분석하고 있다. 이러한 연구목적을 위해 145개국 대상으로 조사된 세계가치조사 자료를 이용하여 열심히 일하는 것과 관련된 가치인식과 사회신뢰간의 관계를 분석하였다. 사회신뢰는 대다수의 사람들을 신뢰할 수 있다고 생각하는지에 관한 질문을이용하였고, 열심히 일하는 것에 대한 가치인식은 2가지 문항으로 측정되었다. 첫 번째 가치인식 변수는 “모든 것이운명에 의해 결정되는 것이 아니고 자신의 노력에 결정된다.”라는 문항으로 측정되었고, 두 번째 가치인식 변수는“운과 배경보다는 열심히 일함으로써 생활이 나아진다.”라는 문항으로 측정되었다. 분석결과, 열심히 일하는 것과 관련된 가치인식은 사회신뢰에 긍정적으로 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다.

영어초록

Other-regarding preferences (ORPs) such as trust, reciprocity and altruism are integral elements in economic transactions between companies, between consumers and retailers, between employers and employees, and in determining economic performance. Especially, social trust has been given a great deal of attention across an array of academic disciplines for its role in promoting cooperation among individuals and groups and for its positive influence on the economic performance of corporations. The crucial role of social trust for decision-making and economic performance has been recognized for a long time. Social trust stands for the social structure of a country and enables the investigation of the relationship between social and economic development. For example, the trust game proposed by Berg et al. (1995) demonstrated that individuals are able to achieve a higher but uncertain payoff by trusting that the anonymous counterpart is willing to cooperate and reciprocate the trust placed.
Most studies (including World Values Survey) describe Korea as a low-trust society than Japan or China, even though a few studies find the evidences that social trust in South Korea is no less than those in other east asian countries. The argument created serious concerns for Korean scholars. The literature showed that income inequality and corruption best explains why social trust in Korea is lower than other east asian countries.
The term “social trust”, which is generalized interpersonal trust, is distinguished from trust embedded in personal relations, or “particularized thick trust”. The most widely used question on social trust in surveys is “In general, do you agree that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with other people?”. The general social survey has asked this same question since in the US, and the World Values Surveys, and European Values Study has used the same question. Social development in the form of higher trust is supposed to be strongly related to economic development. In other words, social trust increases the wealth of nation because social trust has positive influence on economic performance of corporations. The wealth of nation can be considered as aggregation of individuals' wealths in a nation. Thus, one can interpret that social trust increases the wealth of nation if it increases each individual's wealth.
It is possible to accumulate wealth when each individual works hard and when individuals cooperate with each other (or when transaction costs is low) because social trust increases cooperation and it reduces transaction cost (and it helps solve collective action problems).
Previous studies have focused on the role of social trust in increasing cooperation and in reducing transaction cost. However, few study focuses on the relationship between social trust and individuals' perception on hard work.
The salient value similarity (SVS) model explains that social value influence social trust.
Thus, this paper investigates if individuals' perception on hard work influences on social trust because individuals' perception related to hard work represents a social value. Used is the World Values Survey (WVS) data for 55,090 respondents (The number of male is 26,692 and that of female was 28,398.) from 155 nations (including Korea, USA, Spain, Chile, Norway, and so on.). The average age of the respondents was 41.9. The World Values Survey (WVS) is a global research project that explores people’s values and beliefs, how they change over time and what social and political impact they have. It is carried out by a worldwide network of social scientists who, since 1981, have conducted representative national surveys. The WVS is the only source of empirical data on attitudes covering a majority of the world’s population (nearly 90%).
The social trust was measured by degree to which a respondent thinks that most people can be trusted. The perceptions on hard work were measured with 2 questions: The first one is that “Hard work does not generally bring success: it´s more a matter of luck and connections. -In the long run, hard work usually brings a better life.”, and the second one is that “Everything is determined by fate. - People shape their fate themselves.”To test the effects of the two perceptions on the social trust, this study used the GLM (Generalized Linear Model) in which the factors were gender, nation, income, marital status,and the covariates were the two perceptions and age. The results showed that the social trust is positively influenced by the perceptions (related to hard work). The respondents, who perceive that hard work usually brings a better life (or who perceive that hard work generally bring success: it is not a matter of luck and connections) and who perceive that people shape their fate themselves (or who perceive that everything is not determined by fate), showed higher social trust. This implies that the wealth of nation is affected directly and indirectly through social trust by individuals' perception on hard work.
Additionally, this study found that the social trust is different by regional area, income class, and marital status. First, the countries in North Europe have higher social trust than those in the other regional areas (e.g., Asia, America, and Africa). Second, the high income classes have higher social trust than the lower income classes. Third, persons who are married have higher social trust than those who are divorced or separated.

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